An electronic document (ED) may identify a main object (e.g., text, images, and/or graphics) and define a variety of effects (e.g., outer shadows, reflections, etc.) to be applied to the main object. It is the responsibility of a Page Rendering Device (PRD) or user machine to place the main objects and their effects on a page as specified by the ED.
Even though an ED may specify a main object and the parameters associated with the one or more effects to be applied to the main object, the bounding box surrounding the main object might not be reliably specified by the document markup language (e.g., OOXML) of the ED. However, the rasterized object and its bounding box are needed to create the specified effects. For example, it is the main object, as outputted (i.e., rasterized), that is reflected and/or shadowed, not the main object in a pre-rasterized state. Regardless, users still like specifying effects to be applied to main objects in an ED written in a document markup language.